


Distract and Sedate

by calmena



Series: I am robot (hear me glitch) [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Roomba!Ultron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 03:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19880875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calmena/pseuds/calmena
Summary: Due to some small but very significant differences, Ultron ends up in a Roomba. He is somehow collectively adopted by the Avengers as their little murder robot.Written for the TSB - K3: Interrupted by Supervillains and the BBB - B3: Fluff.





	Distract and Sedate

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to QueenMaeve, who is the ultimate beta and did a wonderful job with this. And rae on the WI discord, who I absolutely have to credit for this idea. I ended up not using a lot of stuff, so there might be outtakes and/or another sequel in the future.

Bucky wasn't entirely sure what he was looking at, but he was certain it was trying to kill him.

Or maybe he'd managed to piss off Tony somehow, and this was his punishment. He didn't think so, though. They'd been fine when the Avengers had seen off Thor with Loki's scepter that morning, and Tony had vanished down to his workshop soon after. He'd seemed to be in a good mood, which Bucky thought was probably down to a combination of having caught a bunch of HYDRA goons the previous day, and the amount of data Tony had gotten from the scepter before it had been whisked off-world.

But now this.

Looking down at the puck-shaped robot that kept trying to run over his toes, Bucky frowned. Then sighed.

"JARVIS, what is this?"

_"It appears you've met Ultron, Mr. Barnes."_

Bucky kept looking down as the robot—Ultron, apparently—did its best to maim his feet. There was an angry frowny-face displayed on the screen that made up most of Ultron's top side.

"Why is he so mad at me?"

There was a second or two of silence, before JARVIS answered, with some hesitation. _"I do not think he is displeased with you, personally. It just seems to be his permanent state of being."_

Bucky blinked. This was his life now, apparently. He'd asked for flying car, and what he got was an angry robot-puck. 

Somehow, he felt like he'd gotten the short end of the stick here.

Ultron chose that moment to somehow get caught on the edge of the rug Bucky was standing on, beeping shrilly when he couldn't do much more than rock back and forth because of it. The displayed frowny-face got somehow even more frowny.

Bucky sighed and bent down to free him. He got his fingers run over in thanks.

* * *

"Tony. Doll. What did you do to Ultron to make him so angry? How does a driving puck end up with so much rage?"

"Roomba," Tony muttered past the screwdriver in his mouth, eyes large behind the magnifying glasses he was wearing to peer at what looked like a very large circuit board.

Bucky blinked, then chose to come back to what that meant at a later point. "Okay, but why the anger?"

"I think it's from the scepter," Tony mumbled absently, still working with full concentration. He made a triumphant sound when he glanced at some numbers on the screen propped up next to his project, then visibly reminded himself that he was mid-conversation. "JARVIS said there was a surge of something. Good thing Thor took that thing off-planet, we don't want that running around here."

"I'm… pretty sure we do have it running around? Tony? Ultron?" There was no recrimination in Bucky's voice, just confusion. It sounded like this was a _situation_ , but Tony wasn't acting like it was, so Bucky was mostly just perplexed.

"Ultron's just a baby," Tony reassured, smiling at him for a second before he turned his eyes back to the circuit board, "J sandboxed his code; everything's safe, don't worry. I'm hoping he'll grow out of the anger. Just be a good role model or something."

Bucky decided to simply accept that this was life with Tony Stark. He also resolved not to mention that having an ex-assassin as a role model would probably not cure Ultron of his rage.

* * *

Clint flicked bread crumbs from his plate to the floor and cackled as Ultron pointedly turned away from them.

"I have no idea why a Roomba, but I love him," Clint crowed, hopping onto the kitchen counter when Ultron made an about-turn and started going for his toes a second after Clint had said the words.

Bucky, sitting on a kitchen chair with his feet tucked underneath his ass, sighed.

* * *

"This world is crazy," lamented Bucky to Ultron, watching as the robot drove angry little circles in front of the couch where Bucky had curled up. 

He was still scraping leftover goo from the monster slug they'd fought that day out from under his fingernails, and it was disgusting.

Tony had vanished into his bathroom an hour ago and still not emerged. When Bucky had asked, JARVIS had simply told him that _'Sir has moved on to the second bottle of shower gel and is cursing the entire scientific field of biology'_ , which seemed about right.

Sam, not so much curled up as simply seeking refuge from Ultron's wrath, turned to look at him, eyes wild. "It's the people in this frickin' tower, man. Who the hell decided to stick a knife onto a murderous Roomba?"

"His name's Ultron," Bucky corrected, and then thought for a second. "I think the knife was Clint. Though really, it's a glorified toothpick."

"I had to jump on the chair to not get maimed!" Sam said, voice cracking as he switched to a higher register halfway through. "What the hell, man?!"

"Well, look how happy it makes Ultron!"

Both of them turned to look down at the said robot, who was gleefully rotating with the knife attached to his chassis, stabbing at nothing and waiting for someone to set their foot down onto the floor.

"Still looks angry to me," Sam decided, finally, and Bucky rolled his eyes.

"Nah, he's less frowny now that he has the knife, you're just a dumbass."

Sam opened his mouth to reply, no doubt to throw a name right back at him, only to pause when there was a screech as Ultron scraped his knife—smaller than anything Bucky would ever even consider using—against one of the stainless steel legs of the couch Bucky was sitting on. 

In the end, Sam just shook his head and rolled his eyes.

"You and the Avengers both, man," he muttered to himself, either discounting super soldier hearing or maybe just not caring that Bucky could understand every word. "You and the Avengers both."

* * *

Bucky thoughtfully looked at Ultron from where he and Tony were curled up together on the couch, chin set on Tony's shoulder and arms wrapped around his middle.

"Do you think he needs a friend?"

It took a second for Tony to look up from the tablet he'd been working on, and even then it took a few more moments for his eyes to clear of what Bucky affectionately called 'the science haze' before he, too, glanced down at Ultron.

"You think he's lonely?" He caught on immediately, looking thoughtful.

If Bucky knew him at all—and he liked to think he did, what with being in a relationship for going on a year—then Tony was already planning things out in his head, even as they were still talking about it.

* * *

Surprisingly—or not so surprisingly, depending on who was asked—Natasha loved Ultron. She tended to coo at him whenever he tried to swipe at her ankles with his knife, giving him tips on how to improve his technique. Whenever anyone pointed out that Ultron didn't have a technique beyond 'turn and rush', she glared until the comment was rescinded.

She'd taken to affectionally calling him 'little murder robot', in Russian, which had the hilarious effect of making Ultron drive little excited circles and stab at thin air with his knife for a bit whenever she did so. 

'Preening', Bucky called it, while Natasha maintained that Ultron was simply trying to prove her point.

The first time Natasha had called Ultron by the nickname where Tony had been able to hear, he'd almost choked on his coffee, a memory that Bucky often revisited with fond amusement.

Once, Tony had lamented that Ultron would just not stay in the workshop, where he'd originally been supposed to live. Apparently, he always found a way out and ended up on the common floor. It would have been worse had any of them minded, but Bucky thought that really, it seemed like they'd collectively decided to adopt Ultron as theirs.

Even if that did mean that they had to keep up the evasive maneuvers now and then.

* * *

"You're not supposed to have a favorite child," Tony chided jokingly as they watched Sam hop around on his way to the kitchen to avoid Ultron's knives—because he had two now, courtesy of Natasha. "Even if they're not originally yours."

"What do you mean, not originally mine," Bucky protested mildly. "I'm pretty sure Ultron is about 90 percent me."

Tony sighed. "Which illustrates my point perfectly," he said to himself, looking at the ceiling.

Bucky smirked as he grabbed Tony around the middle and pulled him closer, ignoring Clint's retching sounds from one of the overstuffed chairs. "You love it."

The way Tony's face went soft made Bucky's heartbeat speed up. Even after a year, Bucky still felt the urge to sweep him up in his arms and hide him away from the world for a few hours when he saw that expression.

Sam chose that moment to give a pained shout, spoiling the moment more thoroughly than Clint's retching could ever have, as everyone immediately jumped into battle readiness, prepared for anything.

What they found were a hunched-over Sam who was holding kitchen paper to a small cut on his ankle, and a frozen Ultron.

Steve was immediately at Sam's side, mother-henning away, as if he himself wasn't the absolute worst about getting injured back when he was a tiny little shrimp.

Now that the surprise had passed, Sam seemed fine, waving off the concern with a sheepish smile. "It's fine," he reassured, aiming it in Steve's direction when it seemed like he was about to keep hovering. "The little guy here just nicked me, it's barely even bleeding."

This moved the attention onto Ultron, who was still very much frozen in place and—for the first time in Bucky's recollection—not displaying his signature angry frown, but a similarly expressive ':(' before he zipped off when Sam turned towards him and made as if to pat him on the chassis, starting with, "Don't worry, I—"

For a few seconds, they all looked after the robot, blinking.

"I think," Bruce started slowly, frowning, "he might actually be feeling bad about this?"

"He'll snap out of it," Tony tried to reassure, even as his own eyes continued to flicker over to the doorway Ultron had vanished through. The way he unconsciously fiddled with his phone didn't particularly inspire confidence, either. Still, Tony ignored when everyone else sent him skeptical glances and went on, nodding. "It's going to be fine."

* * *

It was not fine.

* * *

Tony fell onto the couch next to Bucky, shooting a long look at everyone else in the room and letting the silence settle for a second or three, like the dramatic person he was.

"Ultron," he started finally, when it seemed like Clint might throw a cushion at him out of impatience, "is moping."

It was a thoroughly underwhelming, entirely unsurprising statement. Clint straight up booed and wasn't even pinched for it by Natasha, who was sitting next to him and usually took that task upon herself.

"Yeah, no shit," Sam threw in, pointing at his ankle. "He keeps leaving the room whenever I enter since this happened."

"He is Tony's son, after all, with the guilt," Clint muttered. "I was wondering whether he was _all_ Bucky."

"I resent that," Tony protested, moving on before someone else could add so much as a word to that. "Anyway, he's hiding away in my lab—don't say it again, Birdbrain, only boring people repeat their jokes—so I'd appreciate it if anyone has an idea about what to do about this."

They looked at each other, silence falling as Tony stared at them expectantly.

"What about that friend we talked about a while ago?" Bucky finally threw in when it seemed like there weren't going to be any other suggestions. The words got him some confused looks from the others, but Tony immediately brightened, remembering.

"Right you are!" He immediately pulled out his tablet to check something, nodding to himself as he got up out of his seat a second later. "This has been nice, but I've gotta run and fix this now, thanks for coming."

And then he was gone. Bucky looked up from where he'd watched Tony's ass until it vanished into the elevator to find himself faced with expectant and wary faces, depending on whose it was.

"'That friend'?" Sam quoted, squinting at Bucky. "Do we even want to know who you were talking about?"

"You'll see," Bucky said mysteriously, mostly because he enjoyed seeing Sam's frustration.

* * *

"We've noticed you've been down the last few days," Steve started tactfully.

They'd put up a banner that had an extremely well-drawn version of Ultron on it, with his usual angry frowny-face instead of the sad one he'd been sporting for the last few days. Clint had made sounds about writing "Intervention" on it, which had been summarily dismissed by Steve when someone had explained to him that it was actually a reference.

Even without it, Ultron turned around and tried to leave the room, only to find Bucky and Tony blocking his path. It was a testament to his current state of mood that he didn't even try to stab them in the ankles. Instead, he stopped mid-movement, turning so that the knives pointed away from the two of them.

It would be very sweet, Bucky thought, if it weren't because he felt bad for scratching Sam.

The curve of the downturned mouth on Ultron display became even more arched and he tentatively started creeping towards the free space under the couch. 

"It's fine, really," Sam tried to throw in, gesturing at his ankle. "It's all healed and stuff, and it was an accident. No need to feel bad."

Nothing changed.

Finally, Tony left his place in the doorway, causing Steve to shift to take his place, instead. Crouching down next to Ultron, who stopped in his tracks as he did so, Tony carefully patted the edge of the chassis, where the screen ended.

"You're a good bot," Tony said, smiling. "And we know that you didn't do it on purpose. So we hoped this might cheer you up a bit."

He made a little gesture at the doorway, and a second later Steve gave a startled yelp as something small and very _pink_ zipped through between his feet.

"This is JOCASTA," Tony explained, ignoring the startled reactions of the other Avengers bar Bucky, who had, of course, become acquainted with JOCASTA already. Mainly when she'd invaded their bedroom halfway through the night because she'd been bored.

He and Tony had summarily decided she was going to be a good fit for Ultron.

The conclusion had only strengthened when JOCASTA had somehow convinced Tony that glitter was a necessary part of her appearance and was now trailing said glitter wherever she went.

Now, everyone was focused on the scene before them, watching JOCASTA—who looked even more like a puck than Ultron, mostly because of her size, which was quite a bit smaller than a Roomba—keep a wary distance, as Ultron's displayed face slowly moved from a very sad face to a ': |'.

Then, suddenly, she let out a shrill, sharp beep and charged at Ultron, bumping against him in a place where there was no knife—and staying there, snuggled up against him, as much as their forms allowed.

For a moment, everyone held their breath. Bucky was pretty sure even Tony was waiting expectantly to see how his two latest robot children were going to get along.

And then, for the first time that anyone had seen, Ultron's display changed to show a ':)'.

Bucky grinned at Tony, who beamed back at him. Everything was going to be alright. Even if they were going to find glitter everywhere for the near future.

And he meant _everywhere_.

**Author's Note:**

> WHY IS MY FLUFF ALWAYS CRACKY?


End file.
